Erica Sadun
Erica Sadun | 12:25 pm | June 22, 2008 | AppStore, 2.0, Software, iPod touch, iPhone
I’ve wavered back and forth recently about what to do about XLaunch. It simply got too big and complicated, so I’m breaking it down into three components: AppFlow offers application launching both from a list and from a coverflow viewpoint. iPocket lets you capture data onto your iPhone and share it out to the world, via Bonjour, FTP, and the WWW. I’m thinking of releasing XLaunch with the complete feature set (launching, badging, file browsing, file sharing) as well, kind of as the Godzilla of iPhone file management. Any thoughts on this?
Erica Sadun | 12:22 pm | | Misc
Can’t wait for the NDA to go away.
Erica Sadun | 1:30 pm | May 13, 2008 | Admin
This NDA period has been dreary, keeping me from posting all the wonderful things I’d love to talk about here. Hopefully, the NDA will go away within a few weeks and I can resume discussion about 2.0 specific software.
The iPhone Developer Cookbook continues well. I’m working with Chuck Toporek over at Addison Wesley on this. Hopefully a rough cut of the book will appear around the instant that the NDA disappears.
In the mean time, check out the new iPhone blog at O’Reilly. It’s being run by the amazing Derrick Story, the same guy behind Digital Media and Mac Devcenter.
Erica Sadun | 6:48 pm | April 28, 2008 | Feature Requests, 2.0, Update, Applications, iPod touch, Software, iPhone
The new 2.0 SDK version of XLaunch combines all the features you use and love in the 1.1.4 version plus several new options. I’m pleased that I was able to upgrade the application without losing features along the way–and especially happy that I was able to merge MakeItMine and Banner in without destroying the simple interface.
You can still launch webclips and badge apps, and assign applications to the home key for double-taps. You can still browse in both table or coverflow modes.
Now you can also set carrier text and the banner text via the Customize options. And I’m considering adding other customization features there as well. If you have any other suggestions or feature requests, please speak up! Now’s the time to jump in while the design remains fluid.
Erica Sadun | 2:32 pm | April 27, 2008 | Experimental, 2.0, Feature Requests, Applications, iPod touch, Software, iPhone
So I’ve been hard at work on the new SDK and have been developing an application that more or less merges a lot of the functionality of SendSong, SendFile, SendPics, etc. Some features have been ellusive–Apple apparently disabled email attachments from the iPhone–others work well, such as Bonjour file sharing.
Here is the current feature set along with planned areas. Now’s the time to speak up if you’d like to see a feature added or have questions about how the program works. It’s basically a file browser that allows you to walk through the entire UNIX Application tree–wherever Apple’s sandboxing allows, that is–preview, inspect, and share files.
Erica Sadun | 9:04 pm | April 16, 2008 | Update, Utilities
Play any audio file from the command line with “play”.
Erica Sadun | 7:00 pm | April 14, 2008 | Test Requests, 2.0, Update, Utilities, iPod touch, Software, iPhone
Here they are, ready to be downloaded as individual utilities. I compiled these within the last few weeks based on reverse-engineering but I haven’t had the ability to test them out until today. Some work well (deviceinfo, badge, ip-print, plutil, restart). Others need some TLC (itmsSearch, mailFile).
These utilities are pretty much useless unless you have an ipwned developer 2.0 release. I had to do a lot of updates, particularly on appLoad, which uses a new way of loading applications.
So, yay to the dev team and if you have any specific requests, let me know. So far I have not been able to make anything run that uses windowing. If you have any tips or hints about getting around this do let me know.
Erica Sadun | 8:47 am | April 10, 2008 | Books
Yesterday, I received my author copy box from Apress of “Taking your iPod touch to the Max”. I worked hard on the book and am very proud of the results. It’s a general user introduction to the iPod touch. I had a little more time to work on it than I did its iPhone older brother, and together the two volumes really complement each other. By dint of double-triple-overtime, I managed to cover the January Update before the book went to press.
Some readers have asked why I didn’t end up covering all the latest hacks. Books need several month to prepare and to publish, and they can’t self-update once they hit the shelf. My “to the Max” books cover all the things you’ll want to know about day-to-day use and getting the most from your unit, to serve you over its lifetime.
I’m really happy with both volumes. But if you’re looking for a book about the latest, coolest hacks, look somewhere else. This isn’t it.
Erica Sadun | 4:02 pm | April 9, 2008 | Admin
If you’re curious as to what I’ve been up to, sample videos for some of my chapters are live. You can peek at them here. I’m curious as to your feedback about their utility. Please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.
Erica Sadun | 4:27 pm | March 28, 2008 | Admin
I’ve been so busy with the new Apple SDK that a lot of the normal software development has been pushed to the side. If you have any specific bug reports or feature requests that aren’t too time consuming please let me know in the comments. Apologies again for being so hard to pin down.
